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Friday, March 21, 2014

TWO

Happy Friday everyone! That means we now have two days to go before the first autocross for points this year. The number two also stands for our huge number of cars in the NMS stables, our world wide global presence motor sport team (and entirely made up entity) that in fantasy world is competing in NASCAR, Indy car, and Formula 1 races around the world every day of the year. Well, as soon as we win a bazillion dollar lottery, and build up the team to that level anyway. For now, it's two guys in their second year of autocross with a blog!

What makes autocross fun is that you can get started with just a couple of items you probably already have, or you can even borrow them, and get started! Let's start with one thing you have to have (or borrow), and that is a car. Pretty much any car will do, as long as it has four wheels and runs, and can run safely. To make sure everyone is safe, each event starts with registering, determining what class your car should compete in, and then the tech inspection to ensure that the car is safe. Just some basic checks to make sure you have a helmet, nothing loose in the car that might get thrown around and hurt you, and to make sure the wheels are not going to fall off and the brakes work.

Beyond the car, you will need to wear a helmet, and if you don't have one then our South Carolina region of the Sports Car Club of America will loan you one. Then about the only thing you need is a number on your car, and you can even do that with painters tape! As long as you don't put blue tape on your blue car, it's pretty simple. Last year I upgraded my tape number to a simple magnetic sign that sticks on the side of the car. Brian has gone one step further and had some vinyl graphics and his race number of 86 applied to the car full time. He wrote about that on the blog a few days ago HERE.

Speaking of numbers, my #77 will also be co-driven this weekend by my friend Andre, since he is coming out to Darlington to enter his first autocross. So that the officials can tell which of us is driving, we'll stick an extra number 1 in front of #77, so Andre will be driving the same car with #177. If that's not confusing enough, I talked to the other two Fiat drivers that are entered, and it turns out that they have picked numbers 78 and 79. We'll see if we can get a photo of the three Italians together.

So far we have 56 drivers entered for Sunday, and I'm sure there will be more before the first car fires up two days from now. The number 77 and 177 car will be in the Street category, and at last check there were 12 of us in our class. With points awarded to the top 8 drivers as we kick off the season, I'm shooting for a top 5 finish.